Coasts’ rise and fall

“Scottish Environment Secretary, Roseanna Cunningham, commenting on a recent report about coastal erosion, said that: ‘it’s vital that local authorities, transport agencies and other planning bodies investigate how they can work together to manage coastal change before it’s too late,’” writes a Craigie regular.

“Areas all along the east coast will be threatened by ‘the devastating impact of climate change’, said the report.

“But what about the impact of climate change on the west coast? No mention was made of that, probably because the opposite is happening there,” he comments.

“My father acquired Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedias for us in 1938 and I clearly remember looking at maps of the British Isles showing what was happening to our coasts then. I still have these encyclopaedias and I checked to see if I had remembered correctly what I had read. Yes, there it was – a map showing our east coast sinking and our west coast rising.

“I also remember an Aberdeen professor demonstrating to his students that Aberdeen was tilting to the east and would eventually disappear into the sea – not any time soon, but some day in the very distant future.

“It is also true that England used to be joined by a land bridge to the Continent. When there are exceptionally low tides, the stumps of trees and other artefacts still bear witness to the fact that, where the North Sea and the English Channel now are, there was once dry land.

“There’s nothing new about the movements of our coastlines. They have been on the move for millennia. It is not a recent phenomenon. If there is climate change, it is only one phase of a cycle of warming and cooling which has also been going on for many thousands, if not millions, of years.

“Miniature ice ages and warmer periods have been recorded in comparatively recent times. History records that the Vikings were able to prosper in Greenland and even make it to North America during a particularly warm period.”